Last week I received the CD “Vanity Is A Virtue” of Nicodemus. I had never heard of this band but some research on the internet told me that Nicodemus began in late 1998 as a project of American musician Christopher Morris. Later Andrew Greene (drums), Mathew McGee (lead guitar) and Dave Peters (guitar) joined the band. The earlier records “Tales Of The Lovelorn & Necromantic” (2000) and “The Supernatural Omnibus” (2003) were inspired by traditional, progressive and European black metal.

In 2005 “Vanity Is A Virtue” was released by the Greek metal label Sonic Age Records. The band has changed its style to suit the European market. The music is more melodic and progressive, which made “Vanity Is A Virtue” more accessible than the earlier records.

There are a lot of influences (dark metal, progressive, and gothic, psychedelic), according to the band there are comparisons to bands like Dream Theater and Rush, as well as to Theatre Of Tragedy and Tristan. To be honest, the comparison with Dream Theatre and Rush (both are my favourite bands) is a little bit too much honour.

The vocals of Christopher Morris are quite monotonous. He’s not one of my favourite singers, the grunts are much better. Unfortunately the keyboards dominate strongly, they drown out the guitar riffs, which is a pity, otherwise “Vanity Is A Virtue” should have been a great heavy record.

The songs are rather long, between 5 and 9 minutes. On “Benighted” Christopher Morris shows you how fast he plays the bassguitar. The instrumental song (“A Metaphysical Theory of Dynamics”) contains too many repetitions, which becomes boring after a while, if you compare your music with bands like Dream Theatre and Rush, don’t put such an instrumental song on the cd.
The songs “Next In Nocturne” and “Negative Ions” have a great structure with many changes in emotions and speed. Christopher screams his grunts out. “Pyramidion” and “….and It Becomes You” are songs with a lot of gothic and psychedelic influences, musically these 4 songs are great songs. As said earlier minus points are the vocals and the domination of the keyboards. Otherwise the rating should have been higher.